


apply it gently (to the love you've lent me)

by loudamy



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, literally just fluff & some cough medicine, no corona i promise, only had mac peralta for 4 months but i would die for him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:54:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudamy/pseuds/loudamy
Summary: The first time little Mac gets sick, so does Jake. And Amy.  Of course, it doesn't happen that fluently, but chaos rarely does.Just a dose of fluff, set after 7x13.
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 28
Kudos: 99





	apply it gently (to the love you've lent me)

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is from joanna newsom's 'only skin'
> 
> kinda felt like writing for once & i missed them

The first time little Mac gets sick, Jake gets sick. And so does Amy. Although, it doesn’t happen quite that fluently, but chaos rarely does.

Because above Mac’s airy baby sniffles, there’s an angel froth of milk about his lip, and it’s all Jake can do not to fall apart.

‘The doctor just said bedrest and fluids,’ Amy says, simultaneously jiggling Mac on her hip, depositing his empty bottle in the sink and hanging up the phone. More than six months in as a mother and Jake always reveres her superhuman abilities.

Some parts - most things, it seems to him - come naturally to her, like meal prepping and scheduled naptimes and most of all, making him feel loved and happy (Mac _is_ a Peralta, after all, she was bound to take to that with ease).

Other things, like coping with a sick, screaming baby whilst navigating a smooth return to work _and_ fending off her mother’s advice which hinges finely between helpful and overbearing - well, that’s a little more difficult.

Jake emerges from an only _slightly_ exaggerated coughing fit and looks hopefully over at Amy, who by now is done settling Mac and leaning over to deposit him in Jake’s waiting arms.

‘No kiss?’

Amy looks up. ‘Pass,’ she says. ‘You’re a veritable cesspit of germs right now.’

‘You can definitely kiss me.’ protests Jake. ‘We’re married. My germs _are_ your germs, I’m pretty sure it was in the vows.’

Mac babbles something incoherent and Jake smirks, folding his arms. ‘See? Our son agrees with me.’

Amy rolls her eyes, but leans in and kisses him softly anyway. He tastes like grape chapstick and cough medicine, a heady mixture that takes her back to an early eve in their relationship; blowing off her parents to stay in bed with a chesty Jake, lukewarm soup and vapour rub and falling asleep to a docuseries on birds of prey.

‘Are you going to be ok? Do I need to call Karen?’

‘I don’t know, my left side is a little sore…’

‘No, babe, remember, you got winded playing Quidditch with Charles.’ Amy reminds him, making a private note to message Karen on her break.

‘Okay, I’ve pumped for the day - it’s all in the fridge. Call me if either of you need anything and I’ll come straight home.’ she pauses, and Jake must read the momentary worry, because he jiggles Mac, who claps his hands, and tells her - ‘we’ll be just fine, right Mac? Maybe catch up on our correspondence?’

Amy slips into her sergeant’s jacket, grabs a stack of files that Jake hopes aren’t important because Mac spit-up on them 0.8 seconds ago, and as if on cue, Mac gabbles something that probably translates to, ‘where’s my kiss?’. Amy, fluent in all things Peralta, regards him dearly for two last pecks - one on each rosy cheek, and leaves.

‘Bye Ames, I love you.’ Jake shouts from the couch, where he and Mac are already wrestling with blankets and laughing throatily. ‘Double blanket-burrito!’

She gets a text at half two from Karen - _just popped by to drop off some super-water and found them like this! Both doing fine_ \- with a picture of Jake splayed out languidly over the couch, one arm wrapped around little Mac, nuzzled into his chest, both asleep and spilling out of their ruined blanket burrito. Jake’s well-worn copy of _Cry Hard with a Vengeance_ dangles from his other hand - no doubt he’s perused the chapter on colds.

She doesn’t show Charles the picture when he runs over to ask why her eyes are welling up - if it had that effect on her, _he’s_ definitely not ready to see it - but it _does_ end up framed on her desk a week later.

An hour before her shift ends, Jake rings her desk, sounding positively chirpy by this point. It’s lucky, because his empty desk chair and even emptier silence around his desk is starting to get to her.

‘Hey, it’s me. Quick, pretend I’m the commissioner or something with a top-secret case for you so that you don’t get in trouble.’

‘Jake, nobody cares if I speak to my husband at work. In fact, I don’t think anyone is even listening.’

‘Just called to let you know that Mac is fine and his temperature is down. We had more disgusting blended vegetables for lunch. I took a vitamin c tablet an hour ago so I’m probably immortal now. Also, did were we like, super attached to the lamp in the nursery? Mac and I were playing the transformers game and-’

‘Jake…!’

‘I looove you, byee!’

It’s the throatiness in his voice that makes her relent, later, and stop by Tony’s for a pizza-bagel (not display-temp, Jake isn’t _that_ ill). He hasn’t replied to any of her texts for the last hour, which means either he’s asleep or entirely wrapped up in some insane new game with Mac, but Amy’s betting on the first as she takes the first few steps inside their apartment.

‘Babe?’ Amy calls, quietly enough that she shouldn’t wake them up but loudly enough that she’ll be heard over whichever of Mac’s baby DVDs might be playing (his favourite is currently anything Ninja Turtles, but he also loves the Spanish alphabet sing-along, courtesy of the Santiago grandparents.)

The apartment is warm and dark, although a lot cleaner than when she left it and Amy smiles softly to herself imagining Jake lumbering around with a duster with Mac strapped into his Björn, both of them laughing and sneezing in tandem.

The couch has been discarded; only what looks like a collapsed fort, Mac’s pineapple sippy cup and the dungarees he was wearing that morning remain. Absently clearing the debris, Amy tiptoes into the master bedroom and stops short as the tension melts from her body.

Mac and Jake: two precious burrito sleepers, instead wound as close as can be. Jake’s starfishing on to her side - something, she knows, he does to compensate for her absence beside him - and Mac is wedged between Jake and his giant stuffed turtle, a crescent curled into his father.

Not for the first time, she’s struck by the resemblance between them, which is sometimes muted by Mac’s colouring, rich browns and charcoals like her. But the slope of the nose, the crease of the cheek, it’s all Jake. And the curls, of course, starting to thicken and coil now. So intent is Amy on framing that moment in her mind, she barely notices Jake stirring.

‘Babe one and babe two,’ Jake says, sleepily, pointing with a weak finger to himself and Mac, who yawns (her baby lion). ‘Present and accounted for.’

‘Go back to sleep,’ Amy says, grazing his forehead gently with her fingers. ‘You’re still warm. I’ll keep your pizza for-’

‘Pizza?’ Jake cracks one eye open, then the other. ‘Sound good, mackintosh?’ his British accent needs serious work, but Mac giggles, enchanted by him nonetheless.

Two pudgy hands are now flailing at Amy, obviously done with sleep and being Jake’s bed-mate for the time being.

‘I’ll heat it up.’ Mac is making ‘mm-mm-mm!’ noises at Amy now, which, whatever David says, is definitely a burgeoning attempt at ‘mama’, so she gently takes him into her arms and hums her love song: how she’s missed him, how just that first sniff of his little head gives her perfect repose. Moments later, and Jake wraps his arms around her midriff, head settling on her shoulder.

Then Jake speaks, so soft and dreamy that neither Amy or Mac stir, ‘is this exactly what you imagined, Ames? ‘Cause it is for me.’

‘Mm-hm, covered in Peralta drool,’ Amy says, but although he snorts, suddenly, she’s not in the mood to tease. ‘It’s exactly what I dreamed about, Jake.’

‘That’s embarrassing,’ he nips at her neck and shuffles out of the room but she knows he’s touched by her sincerity.

Jake is making an effort to be more alert now; even when he’s sick he wants nothing more than to hear about her day. It’s what makes being apart from her two boys bearable, and while she fills him in on the fairly mundane day’s events, he’s pulling out fish and vegetables for her and turning on the grill, wiping down Mac’s highchair, warming a bottle, tickling Mac and chattering to keep him entertained while he waits. It’s no longer strange to her to watch him doing these things in their home, the idle domesticity that they’ve made their own. Rather, it’s a reminder at how wholly she’s surrounded herself with love. But it’s still enough to give pause. Especially when a year ago it seemed as though this would never be their normal.

‘…and Holt agreed, so I really want to watch that documentary on meiosis and mitosis tomorrow.’

‘Don’t be fooled, Mac,’ Jake says, dropping a kiss to Mac’s head as he brings the first spoonful of blended vegetables to his waiting mouth (and simultaneously manages to make an impressive dent in his own pizza). ‘I’m like, eighty percent sure Mommy is making up words.’

There’s something still so intimate about coming home every evening, Jake fooling around before he takes over the cooking, sharing anecdotes over both food and a baby that they’ve made together.

‘I can sleep on the couch tonight if you want?’ Jake offers, after his nightly struggle with the dishwasher. He’s serious, Amy knows, but not without that puppyish hope. Their couch might be new and super comfortable for making out and movie nights and fort-building, but it doesn’t compare to sleeping next to Amy. Actually, in Jake’s opinion, very little does.

‘Don’t even think about it.’ they’ve barely spent a night apart since his time in prison and after eight weeks of broken sleep and bad dreams Amy’s willed never to go to bed unless it’s in his arms. Or him in hers. The point is, she just can’t sleep without Jake spending ten minutes wriggling into the perfect sleeping position or his head lolling on her shoulder as she finishes the crossword.

She pays for that choice the next morning, however, waking Jake up at a disgusting hour with her tossing and turning. He flicks on the light and on the way back from checking on Mac, fetches her a hot water bottle, cold tablets, a cool flannel for her face.

‘You’re feverish,’ he tells her, guiltily, to which Amy snickers because, as she groggily informs him, she never gets ill, and might she remind him that she’s immune to things he’s never even heard of?

‘You gotta take a sick day tomorrow, Ames.’

Mm-hmm, love you,’ Amy mumbles, already halfway lost to him, fingers curling in sleep. Jake tugs the covers right up to her chin, drops a kiss on her cold nose, and leaves a pair of woolly socks on the radiator for when she wakes up.

* * *

Amy proceeds to sleep through the first two of her alarms _and_ Mac’s early morning “I’m ready for attention now” cries. By the time Jake (who is already back to himself) has Mac fed and clothed and is halfway through a bowl of Lucky Charms, she’s barely stirred from their bed.

‘Hey, honey…’ Jake says in a near croon, perching on the end of the bed. ‘You feeling ok?’

‘Just tired, I’m getting up now.’ it won’t wash with Jake though; he’s already inspecting her clammy forehead and she leans into his cool touch.

‘You’re not going into work today, babe. I already called the precinct.’

‘But Holt and I were supposed to-’

‘Holt would be the worst of everyone if you came in and spread this around. You know what he thinks about sneezing in public.’ Jake pauses and hums into a baritone. ‘It’s like serving two types of beans together. A _faux-pas_ , Peralta.’

‘Mac…’

‘I can drop him off at my mom’s on the way if you want. Or the nanny can come.’

‘No, I don’t want to spread this to anyone else,’ Amy glares as she takes the water Jake’s placed by her bedside.

‘Sorry,’ Jake says, but he’s smiling fondly when glowers at him over the top of her glass. ‘Guess your perfect immune system is not quite immune to everything, huh?’

‘Mm, Peralta-itis.’ Amy throws off the bedcovers and heaves into the bathroom to locate her toothbrush.

‘You’re secretly thrilled about blowing off work and getting to spend the entire day with Mac, aren’t you?’ Jake cocks his head.

‘No,’ Amy says, at once, but Jake, impassive, breaks her almost instantly. ‘Okay, yes. I know I just had three months with him but…I hate being away all day and feeling like I might miss something.’

‘I know. I feel the same way. But we’re still finding our balance. And we’ll be here for whenever he needs us, he knows that.’ when he says it, she believes it, and satisfied that she’s well enough to take the day, he leaves them, and half of his heart, and goes to work.

…only to sulk at his desk for the entire morning. Jake isn’t the slightest bit cheered when Holt offers up his thoughts on the new Percy Jackson series or when Charles bounds over to tell him that there’s a perp in the holding cell with six fingers (it turns out one of them is just a Cheeto, anyway).

He texts Amy, sparingly at first because he knows she’s tired and doesn’t want to keep her up. Then he spams her with bitmojis and laments the lack of her, and their little chunk, by his side.

At eleven she sends him a line of kisses and a picture of Mac nursing, which disables Jake for a good ten minutes because even though he’s not there to come apart to Mac’s sweet snuffling and Amy’s fairy sighs of contentment, he _has_ been, every evening since they brought their baby home, and suddenly it’s much harder to be at work and be present than he imagined. He sends her a string of hearts back and wills time to go faster.

Later Amy sends him a video that he abandons his arrest report for, hurtling into the breakroom to watch in peace. Mac is splodged on her lap and as still and settled as Jake’s ever seen his son, his hammy baby fists resting on a page of _Harry Potter_ as Amy reads aloud.

 _You’re already turning him into a huge nerd_ , Jake texts back with a gigantic smile on his face. Scully chooses that moment to stumble into the breakroom and grins through a pizza-sauce smile, patting Jake on the shoulder when he shows him the video and inadvertently smearing his plaid with sauce in the process.

He picks up Mexican food - Amy’s choice when she’s under the weather- and can’t resist the teddy plushie at the counter when he stops to get more throat sweets, because it’s pale green and has sloping button eyes and when he imagines Mac tucked up with it, a little sleeping rose, he feels giddy in that unfamiliar, humbling way that only fatherhood could give him. Spotting a bunch of cut-price peonies, exactly the same shade of baby pink as Amy’s favourite pyjamas, Jake grins sheepishly at the clerk and buys them too.

It doesn’t matter if Mac’s already got a mountain of teddies at home thanks to his seven doting uncles (David’s teddy languishes in the dust under Mac’s crib - Amy swore up and down she had nothing to do with that), two sets of adoring grandparents and of course; Charles.

Because Jake will do anything, always, to make sure his son knows how much he loves him.

‘Hey, babe,’ he calls, slotting the key in the door, ‘are you feeling better? Is Mac-’

There’s a pause, a Spanish curse word, and a kerfuffle that sounds strangely like someone scrabbling around for a remote control. Jake materialises in the doorway just as the end credits of a very familiar film are zapped from the television screen.

Jake gasps. ‘Were you two watching Die Hard? Without me? _Amy_!’ the scandalised tone is undercut by his arms wrapping around her waist and knotting the blanket tighter to her midriff.

‘It was the only thing that got him to sleep!’ Amy protests, managing to look passably guilty. ‘If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t watching it.’ she points to a case file peeking out from underneath a pillow.

‘Babe,’ Jake wheedles. ‘You can’t watch Die Hard without me. That’s basically cheating.’

‘It got _your son_ to sleep instead of crying because he’s all stuffed up.’ says Amy, sweetly, managing to pry one of the takeout bags from his hand and lay feathery kisses up his jaw at the same time.

Jake knows she’s won, especially when she nips at that tender spot on his jaw, the scratchy bit he always misses shaving, but argues the point anyway. ‘It’s not the same experience if I’m not there.’

‘Actually, I got much more into the plot without you distracting me by giving backstories on all the characters.’ Amy says, to his chagrin, but before he can express true hurt at that statement, there’s a tinny, animated noise, and Amy tenses. Jake, expert in reading Amy’s body language and expressions, which is a simple product of being in love with somebody and spending nearly all your time with them, notices instantly.

‘What was that?’

‘Huh? Nothing! Hey, want to have sex?’

‘Don’t try to distract me, and also yes, but was that what I think it was?’ Jake narrows his eyes at her; Amy has the grace to look guilty, if only for a moment, because by the time he’s dug his Switch out from underneath the couch cushions she has Mac in her arms and they’re both blinking innocently at him with big, liquid brown eyes.

‘You beat Wario?’ Jake says, in a hollow voice, staring at the screen where his rival of many eons twitches, defeated.

‘I’m sorry!’ Amy exclaims. ‘I didn’t mean to…I was just so bored, and I needed a break from the case, so I turned it on and…’

‘That’s fine, it’s fine,’ says Jake, a tad pitchy. ‘Not like I’ve been. Trying to beat him for months. Paid two hundred dollars for an unofficial game guide. Whatever.’

‘Hey, so Gina called,’ Amy starts hastily unpacking food, eager to change the subject. ‘Said she’ll bring Iggy over soon.’

‘Right, first time she’ll be seeing Mac in a while.’ Jake’s now jiggling Mac in his arms as the baby pats and pokes at just about every inch of his father’s face he can reach.

(‘Oh, Mac as in _Home Alone_? Macaulay Culkin? Iconic, Jake, I’m impressed…’

‘Huh? No, Mac as in Die Hard, Gina!’)

They come together on the sofa, Amy migrating to Jake’s lap once Mac, drunk on milk, is retired for the night. Jake eventually cracks and begs Amy to teach him how to defeat Wario, but she falls asleep on him midway through her instructions and he carries his wife to bed instead. No regrets.

The next day, Jake gently pushes Amy back into her pillows when Mac’s 4a.m. fussing crackles through the baby monitor; she must be feverish still because she doesn’t grumble when he pulls on her dressing gown instead of his (it’s dark, and hers is _so_ much fluffier even if it doesn’t roll up past his forearm).

Mac is content enough to suck on Jake’s little finger while he bumbles around getting a clean bib and Amy’s nursing pillow and a hot lemon for her, but he eases their son into her arms a few minutes later, knowing it won’t hold for long.

Amy wriggles tiredly into position and fixes Jake with such warmth in her expression, all rumpled hair and crescent eyes, just as the room fills with Mac’s sleepy snuffling as he feeds, that it’s all he can do to look back at her, face creased tender with the weight of everything he’s feeling. He doesn’t need to say the words, it’s all there. His family.

He doesn’t want to leave them a few hours later, when Mac has somehow migrated into Jake’s spot and taken to it quite happily, feathery baby curls over his pillow, somehow both Amy’s thumb and Jake’s heart in his hands. But Amy insists at least one of them turn up (‘it’s not professional, Jake!’), so he kisses two clammy foreheads and leaves soup on the counter and composes a lovesick note on the fridge with Mac’s alphabet magnets.

* * *

‘In a hurry?’ Holt says, the transition from deadpan to rhetorical immaculate. It’s ten minutes before Jake’s shift ends, which seems like an eternity after all day away from both of his favourite people. So maybe he’s rushing a bit, packing his belongings away even more haphazardly than usual, nearly taking Rosa’s jacket instead of his own.

‘Uh, no, why would you think that, I’ve never left work early for personal reasons, ever?’

‘Last week you begged me to let you go home before lunch because you wanted to enter that mini-mall competition to win a pair of night-vision goggles.’

‘I did.’ Jake says, wistfully. ‘They do _not_ work, I wasted so much money.’

‘I understand, Peralta. If Kevin or Cheddar were ever to fall ill, which he would not because we both have an iron constitution, I would want to be by his side as well. Go.’ Holt says, waving a hand. ‘Go home to your family.’

On cue, the elevator dings, and there stands Amy, no longer damp and pale but smiling brilliantly at him from across the room. In one hand she’s steering Mac’s stroller, in the other, a bunch of yellow roses. In the background he can hear Hitchcock going ‘Amy has a baby?’ but ignores it in favour of greeting her, kissing her, fussing over Mac and his new green teddy.

‘Hey, are you feeling better?’

‘Much better,’ Amy says. ‘I thought we’d go for a walk and then pick you up. Right? Pick Daddy up?’ Mac chuckles, Jake’s heart is wrung.

‘Daddy! I’ll never get used to that.’ Charles, as usual, manages to insert himself into a (somewhat) private moment, leaning down to say hello to his godson.

‘Alright, Charles.’ Jake says automatically, vaguely aware of Rosa physically restraining his best friend behind them.

You got me flowers?’ Jake says, giddily. ‘Hey, Diaz, look - Amy got me flowers.’

‘Nice.’

‘Okay,’ Jake says, grinning, no eyes for anyone but his family. ‘Let’s go home.’

* * *

Later, when they’re lost in the bedsheets and he shifts closer to clumsily spoon her, she’s nearly asleep. Mac wheezes from his crib which they’ve pulled into their room, just for tonight; a cold-riddled Mac is a clingy Mac, but Jake understands, wants to be close to him too.

‘S’funny,’ Jake breathes into the silence, ‘it’s exactly what I dreamed of too.’

‘Mm?’

‘Well, for a long time it was just, you know, you.’ he mumbles, and Amy smiles, waits. ‘Then when we decided to start trying, it was like, we could have all of this. And I wanted it, really wanted it. Just kinda crazy that we have it now. Right?’

‘Not that crazy.’ Amy twists so that she’s facing him. She doesn't need to say any more. It's there, reflected in his own eyes.

How strange love is. Yet it’s worth everything.

**Author's Note:**

> lucky charms are gross tell a friend (& jake). hope everyone is stayin safe<3  
> -kudos/comments always appreciated


End file.
